HITLER'S SHADOW - National Archives and Records Administration

to organize last ditch resistance. In mid-April 1945 Kaltenbrunner had ordered
him and others to set up a network of SD and Gestapo agents and saboteurs
to operate behind enemy lines at war’s end. 20 Around the same time, former
Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss also testified at Nuremberg. Höss noted
that he had showed Mildner the entire camp including the gas chambers and
crematoria. Mildner was quite interested, Höss said, because he was deporting
Jews from Katowice to Auschwitz. 21 It was a most damning account.
In April 1946 the British requested Mildner’s extradition, probably because of
the case of the executed British agent. CIC said it had no further interest in him and
did not object to extradition. A cryptic handwritten note on the memo indicated
that he was placed in Rogues Galley on May 4. 22 In June Danish intelligence wanted
to pose more questions to Mildner about the case of Niels Bohr. How much did
Nazi authorities know about Bohr, and why didn’t Mildner arrest him? The Danes
sent a list of questions for American authorities to put to Mildner. But, according
to CIC records, on August 11, 1946, Mildner escaped from Civilian Internment
Camp #409 in Nuremberg. By the time Poland also requested his extradition in
December, his file indicates that his location was unknown. 23
While in U.S. custody, Mildner described every branch and stem of Vienna’s
Gestapo organization. A broad sample of other captured Vienna policemen also gave
details to the Military Intelligence Research Service in Austria about their organization
and their fellow officers. In November 1946 the Military Intelligence Service put out
a 142-page report on the Gestapo in Vienna. Army Intelligence in Austria received
11 copies; the 430th CIC detachment in Austria received 19 copies; the Office of U.S.
Chief of Counsel (for War Crimes) received a single copy. Tracking and punishing
war criminals were not high among the Army’s priorities in late 1946. 24
One must infer why the U.S. Army put in such effort to reconstruct Gestapo
organizational charts. Occupying parts of Germany and Austria, U.S. forces
needed to keep order, and any diehard Nazi police forces represented a threat. On
the other hand, more pragmatic German policemen who had dealt with security
issues such as Communist espionage or subversion might have useful skills and
detailed knowledge. The Army initially seemed to consider Mildner one of the
useful officials. Whether the CIC’s lenient treatment of Mildner contributed in
some way to his ability to escape will remain unknown unless more information
surfaces. There is one suggestive source: Nuremberg psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn
believed Mildner remained in American custody until 1949. 25 It is possible that
New Materials on Former Gestapo Officers | 39